Obama’s State of the Union: Epitaph for Neoconservatism

As anticipated, President Obama’s State of the Union address focused overwhelmingly on domestic matters, notably steps to close the yawning income inequality in American society. Still, the speech contained important signals about Barack Obama’s approach to U.S. foreign policy in his last 1,000 days in office. Beyond a full-throated declaration that “climate change is a fact” and a plea to “fix our broken immigration system,” three broad leitmotifs jumped out. The first was the need to return to normalcy after a dozen frenzied years of the global war on terrorism. The second was the imperative of giving diplomacy a chance to resolve the gravest security threats. The third, more rhetorical than substantive, was the necessity of reframing the language of American exceptionalism.

Collectively, these themes signaled the president’s determination to bury troubling vestiges of neoconservatism that had survived the Bush years.

But Obama declared that he would refuse to send America’s “sons and daughters to be mired in open-ended conflicts” that “may ultimately feed extremism.” Beyond ending “America’s longest war” in Afghanistan, the president promised a more normal foreign policy “true to our constitutional deals,” including reasonable limits on U.S. surveillance programs and, finally, the closure of detention facility in Guantanamo.

These were welcome words indeed. For the past dozen years, U.S. pursuit of a boundless  “war on terrorism” has too often brought to mind the “perpetual war” footing of Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Obama’s declaration promises to bring this era to a close.

Obama, however, got off to a shaky start. Already subjected to scurrilous whispers (then roars) about his citizenship, the new president made an accurate but politically naïve observation in 2009. Yes, he responded to a questioner, Americans believed themselves to be exceptional, just as the Brits believe in “British exceptionalism” and the Greeks in “Greek exceptionalism.” Predictably, the Republican high dudgeon machine went into overdrive, with luminaries like John Bolton—no stranger to the politics of division—tarring Obama as “the first post-American president.” It was another opportunity for (neo)conservative ideologues—having earlier wrapped themselves in the bloody flag of 9/11—to prove Samuel Johnson’s adage, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

Fortunately, Obama has begun to remind Americans that no party has a monopoly on love of country, and that furthermore, what makes the United States exceptional is not merely its dedication to individual rights but (as he said last night) a “spirit of citizenship” that leavens the pursuit of “individual dreams” with the recognition that we can and must “still come together as one American family.”